Over the last few days there's been a few things made me smile. Firstly I've been out in Becky (our Panda) a few times and each time the coolant temperature gauge has indicated normal temperature - you may remember I was telling you all how she had been reading low (around 1/4 deflection). I was about to buy a new thermostat for her but I think I'll wait and see how it behaves.
I've also had the time to do a little more "bonding with Twinkle" - our Seat Ibiza estate:
Her warranty period came to an end in March and I'm now getting to know her in preparation for when I will be doing her next service. It's also my intention to slowly work my way over her from front to rear doing all those little jobs the garage hasn't. Like cleaning up the calipers and sparingly applying a little anti-seize, slaistering some copaslip around the bleed nipples, Removing the alloy road wheels and cleaning up the hubs before applying some more copaslip (the two I've had off already were doing a very good job of corroding in place), etc, etc.
One thing that really annoys me is the indiscriminate, and badly aimed, use of "white grease" on door hinges etc. I prefer a normal spray grease which doesn't leave a white deposit. Here are a few pics of the mess they've made of Twink:
The last pic is of one of the bonnet hinges. The actual hinge pin is tucked away up under the base of the windscreen, not even a wee bit of overspray reached it. The grease has been applied to a part of the hinge which actually doesn't hinge! On the other hand they completely failed to put any on the talgate hinges or bonnet catch! Mind you I'm not going to have any problems with the cable conduits squeaking am I?
A quick look around the engine bay is initially promising though with service items like air and oil filters, top up points for oil, coolant and screen wash looking to be easily accessed. I believe the spark plugs - only 3 - have exceptionally long screw threads so I'll have them out and apply a sparing lick of copaslip to ensure easy removal later (long life plugs - don't know yet when they'll need changing).
I'm not yet sure when the timing belt will need to be done. when I first got interested in this relatively new (EA211) engine type they seemed to be saying it would last the life of the engine but the main agent told me 5 years? I'm going to ask the guys at AVW but at 3 years old there's time a plenty before I need to start worrying. One good thing is that, being just a 3 cylinder tiddler, there is oodles of room between the front of the engine and the o/s inner wing. Once that big slab of an engine mount is out of the way I think you could just about climb in there along side it!
Coolant circulation is interesting with lots and lots of pipes going all over the place. The turbo intercooler is temperature stabilized by running coolant through it. The turbo also seems to feature water cooling. Down the front of the engine, behind the radiator, is this little chap: An electric water pump which I think is circulating coolant to the turbo and other places like maybe the intercooler? That's the thing with the bright metal top and pipes going into it.
On the back of the cylinder head -n/s of the vehicle - is the mechanical main water pump. Driven by a toothed belt, like a mini timing belt, from a sprocket on the back end of one of the cams (exhaust I think):
The rounded plastic cover at towards the top of the image covers this sprocket and the pump is directly below it behind the thermostat housing - you can see the big radiator hose towards to lower left of the image, all made out of plastic I'm disapointed to observe! Presumably the belt gets changed at the same time as the timing belt? Think I'll be doing the pump - which may well include the thermostat - at the same time. Bet that's going to cost?
Finally, this little chap puzzled me for a few moments:
Until I followed his pipe back to the inlet manifold and brake servo plumbing. Of course, stupid, it's a turboed engine isn't it. So a lot of the time there's going to be positive pressure in the inlet tract. You need some way of supplying vacuum to the servo under these conditions so, this is an electrically driven vacuum pump!
Oh dear, this looks like lots of potential things to go wrong doesn't it? Electrically driven vacuum pump. Two water pumps, one electrical, one "strangely" driven off the back end of a cam via a wee synchronous belt. Water pipes absolutely everywhere. I could go on. If I live long enough things could get very interesting in a few years time?
